The crisis continues

The May 2006 President’s Message in American Libraries, entitled “More on Library Education” presents further thoughts from Michael Gorman on the apparent crisis in library education. He doesn’t mention any names in particular but he argues that the claim made by some (myself included) that there is an agreed core curriculum delivered by most ALA-accredited programs is not supported by the data. At least, I think that is what he says. He then turns this around and argues that if it were true, what is the problem with having ALA ‘enforce its accredidation standards and insist that the programs they accredit both teach and do research in a prescribed set of subjects’.

Surely I am not the only one who sees a slight problem here, am I? Please tell me an external professional society, one committed to open access to information and the free exchange of ideas, would never chose to dictate what is and what is not acceptable research to the academic community. Maybe it’s just the tone and the language, but when words like ‘insist’ and ‘enforce’ are used, it hardly encourages open discussion between the various parties.

Of course this also leaves aside the rather thorny problem of where the lines are drawn. Just what is ‘research in a prescribed set of subjects’, to use his words? At what point is work on reading, comprehension, management, design, evaluation, categorization etc. relevent to and part of LIS and when is it not? I really would hate to have to draw such boundaries, but I would hate more for those with no direct connection to the culture of universities to attempt it on our behalf. Good research is often so because of the implications and lessons others can draw from it. To that end, for a field like LIS there is really no fixed boundary outside of which research is irrelevant since even the most obscure work can provide theoretical or conceptual insights to the right faculty. But I digress……the real issue is who gets to define a faculty member’s and a field’s research agenda? It’s clear that some outside of academia feel that this is their right and they are not shy about saying so. Accreditation as cookie-cutter? Enforced standardization of research and teaching agenda? Welcome to the brave new world of library education.

The Creativity Age?

Just back from CHI in Montreal (great city, so-so conference) I noticed how many people on the airplane were reading the Da Vinci Code. On both sides of the aisle I saw fellow-passengers with copies, and a third with another Dan Brown book. As if this was not bad enough, the O’Hare bookstore in which I wiled away a few minutes had more books on gospel secrets, hidden meanings and symbols than you could shake an author’s advance at. The worst yet has to be a new book on losing weight by using the secrets of Da Vinci and the golden ratio. Now, I will not put a link in here – the book will get enough publicity without me but this has to take the prize for the most crass exploitation yet (and as soon as I write this I just know there will be worse to come). Warner, in announcing the new series, said the book is sure “to pique the interest of Da Vinci enthusiasts and weight-loss seekers alike.” Imagine!

Now I’ve read the Da Vinci Code (yes, I am annoyed with myself but I couldn’t help it) and as far as I can tell, the only secret to losing weight it contained was to have yourself chased around Europe by a self-flagellating member of a murderous religious order – that ought to do it. Who needs a book? But the real point here is that I have heard people referring to our latest epoch as the Creativity Age (information being so last year). Well, I suppose if we consider technology to have enabled rapid repurposing and repackaging of one basic idea then it’s true –but if you quaintly thought creativity implied something ‘new’ emerging then I guess we’re still in the information age for now. Phew…..

New forum on Information Studies

Check out InfoSpeak, a podcast program from students at UW’s iSchool: http://www.infospeak.org/shows/show3/index.htm. You can listen to former dean and all round library-enthusiast Mike Eisenberg tell it like it is! As he says in the interview, it’s not an L world or an I world, it’s about people! The whole production is very high quality and a welcome addition to the world of information studies. If you are a radio fan like me, there is a real pleasure to be found in listening to interviews rather than just reading the words – in this case you need to hear Mike talk to feel his passion.

Rankings

US News and World Reports issues its latest graduate school rankings which this year included LIS programs for only the second time. As always, those who do poorly dismiss the exercise but those who do well feel a little differently 🙂 The ranking is hardly scientific but it does indicate pretty accurately how the deans and senior staff at the various programs view each other (and we know that none of these people would ever try to grade their rivals inappropriately). For the record, Texas did well, moving up to #7 overall from #10 in the last ranking, and scoring notable sub-area rankings of #1 in Archives & Preservation, #3 in Legal Librarianship, and #11 in both Digital Libraries and in Information Systems, both of which are new concentrations for us. Here’s the listing of schools, with ranked score from 1-5 (5 being Outstanding):

1. University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign 4.5
University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill 4.5
3. Syracuse University (NY) 4.3
4. University of Washington 4.2
5. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor 4.0
6. Rutgers State University–New Brunswick (NJ) 3.9
7. Indiana University–Bloomington 3.8
University of Pittsburgh 3.8
University of Texas–Austin 3.8
10. Florida State University 3.7
11. Drexel University (PA) 3.6
University of Wisconsin–Madison 3.6
13. Simmons College (MA) 3.5
University of California–Los Angeles 3.5
University of Maryland–College Park 3.5
16. University of North Texas 3.0
University of Tennessee–Knoxville 3.0
18. Wayne State University (MI) 2.9
19. Kent State University (OH) 2.8
University at Buffalo–SUNY 2.8
University of South Carolina–Columbia 2.8
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee 2.8
23. SUNY–Albany 2.7
24. Catholic University of America (DC) 2.6
Louisiana State University–Baton Rouge 2.6
University of Kentucky 2.6
University of Missouri–Columbia 2.6
University of Oklahoma 2.6
University of South Florida 2.6
30. San Jose State University (CA) 2.5
University of Alabama–Tuscaloosa 2.5
University of Hawaii–Manoa 2.5

More school changes

I just returned from a trip to the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh (http://www.sis.pitt.edu/). Currently the home to two depts (one in LIS and the other in Information Science and Telecommunications), the school has now agreed to merge these departments into a single entity. I was pretty impressed with what I saw and I think the merger is exactly what is needed to create a more inclusive sense of an information school. The old disciplinary divisions that made sense in the 1970s probably do not work too well now and it’s important to note that intellectual fields shift and evolve — I doubt any name that is chosen now will remain with us forever. But if you are counting, the number of ALA-accredited degree programs which are issued by a school without the L word in its name has reached 18 out of 54, that’s one-third. Suddenly being an i-School has become quite normal.

New ALA survey on library use

Just when you thought that nobody used libraries anymore because they were too busy with Google, the ALA announced its latest survey on public library use (www.ala.org/ala/ors/reports/2006KRCReport.pdf). The data are intriguing:

135 million adult Americans visited the library last year.
2/3 of the US adult population has a library card
7/10 users are highly satisfied with the service they received
6/10 people use the internet or computer when visiting the library
9/10 believe the library has a future in the digital age

All positive stuff but the report does contain the actual questions used and one might be forgiven for finding them a little leading. Clearly, the most common purpose for ever going to a library is ‘educational’ (32%), which reminds me of those studies on what people watched on TV which showed that we all watched PBS documentaries, all night! Everyone loves the fact that the library is ‘free’ but there are some oddities: 81% people who visit the library go to check out books but only 38% take out videos or DVDs. Amazingly, more than half of library users go there to consult with librarians, which is pretty surprising to us in Texas since many public libraries don’t even have a qualified librarian on staff (let’s not get into the Cuban variant on that please). Reading the questions as asked one gets the feeling that this survey would have benefited from a few alternative wordings to avoid the halo agreement effects that might be at work here.

I must really go to an odd branch because when I visit, the computer terminals are full, the stacks are empty and I hardly ever meet any members of the adult population whom I know. Luckily, more than half of those asked believed funding for public libraries should be increased from its paltry levels (about $25 per year per person in local tax support) to more than $40, which would make a difference. Though not mentioned in this report – the majority of public libraries in this country have an annual budget of less than $50 000 – not much scope for staff, collections and new DVD’s there (no wonder so few people take them out). Wouldn’t you think this service was good under the circumstances? I think it is close to miraculous. For a look at the ‘return on investment’ provided by public libraries see: http://www.oclc.org/roi/ or for a good overview of some of the financial issues libraries face, try the OCLC Environmental Scan, especially the economics section at: http://www.oclc.org/membership/escan/economic/

In sum, libraries are a national treasure but they are being left to decay by a lack of vision, a lack of investment and a lack of leadership. It will take more than a one-sided survey to change this but it’s clear that most people still care. Turning that goodwill into action is something we might expect from the ALA, just don’t go to their website looking for answers.

What’s in a name? Berkeley becomes an iSchool

The not-so-wonderfully named School of Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley just announced that it has changed its name to the School of Information (http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/). The previous name lasted only 12 years, replacing the common School of Library and Information Science, which itself replaced School of Librarianship in 1976 (at this rate we might expect further updates on the name in 5 years). The new name mirrors the names of schools at Texas, Michigan, Washington and Florida (that last being a College of Information) and while one may view such a change as trivial, I would agrgue that this is an important signal of change in the academic study of information.

The language of information is shared across disciplines and qualifiers such as ‘science’ ‘studies’ or ‘systems’ evoke a rational but limiting interpretation of this field’s goals and values. If you do not believe that information is a more powerful force in our lives now then ever before then you will not care for any such name change. But if you understand that this is a moment in history where a vast range of issues related to information, from its control to its provision, from its access to its pricing, from its creation to its preservation, are being shaped by us and for us through forces and mechanisms that we need to understand, then the need for schools of information is obvious.

When we changed our name I received many comments – I trust others closer to Berkeley are making their views known. But 5 years ago, the idea of their being a school of information made many uncomfortable here. No doubt the same was said of schools of communication or of education in their day, but who now thinks these labels too general to have meaning? One day, I suspect the same will be true for iSchools. Congratulations Berkeley!

Top 10 Rules of IA

After 5 years of writing a column on information architecture for BASIST I summed up my take on the field in ten simple ‘rules’ (I use the term loosely).

1. No, we never did define it to everyone’s satisfaction.
2. Communities matter more.
3. There will be something else after blogs, wikis and memes.
4. Understanding people’s needs for information is a thorny problem.
5. A profession is not defined solely by financial concerns.
6. Findability is not a sufficient basis for architecture.
7. Usability is a design value, not a field.
8. Data is stored: Information is experienced
9. Most of the world is still not able to have this experience.
10. We’re still figuring this out, so don’t stop trying to shape it.

Obviously these need to be interepreted in the context of an emerging set of concerns but here they are for the record. I had a great time with that column but it was time for fresh perspectives and I hate to write on a fixed schedule. You can access the past columns on my own publications page: http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~adillon/publications.html

Jailed for an opinion?

With all the talk of Yahoo filtering information access, tyou might miss a European story involving holocuast denial. David Irving, a British “historian” most famous for his claims that the holocaust did not happen, has been jailed in Austria for saying as much in a speech. He subsequently claims to have changed his mind on the basis of reviewing new information but that was too late for the court. Oddly, the comments he made were in a speech years ago, and his defense is partly based on his claim that ‘history is a growing tree’ and he now knows more than he did at the time of his comments. You can find an account of this here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4733820.stm but this will not give you the full picture. Irving’s work has been dissected by notable historians who have tended to view his scholarship as dubious (to put it mildly), and his attempt to sue others who have criticized him failed miserably in a British court a few years back. Disturbingly, the report above mentions that Irving receives 300 fan mails a week for his views, which I suppose would encourage anyone to keep talking. But this leaves us with some interesting dilemmas. Just where does freedom of expression end? And if countering an extremist view takes painstaking research, how can the information needed to gain a balanced view be more easily accessed? I suspect there will always be people who chose to hold an opinion no matter what the evidence but this story suggests that emotion drives people far more than rationality and I wonder just where we find room for that in discussions of information, reliability, and the record of human knowledge.

Gallup on Blogs

The Gallup group have just released a poll on blogging (http://poll.gallup.com/content/?ci=21397) and it is being interpreted by some as a swipe at the hype. In a survey of just over 1000 adult respondents they report that 60% of users never read a blog. This is a classic case of needing to read the full data to get at the story. A reporter from our local student paper rang me to ask if this showed that blogs were just a fad. Hum… 40% of the adults in this poll did read blogs, and we know that the biggest users are teenagers. Add to the mix the comparative recency of blogging and one might think these data make a pretty compelling case for its sustainability and long-term health.

Of course, the real story, as always with technology, is people, and homo sapiens really does like to talk and share ideas. Like everything involving our words and voices, not all of it is worth reading or hearing, but blogging gives you the chance to make that call for yourself. I suspect the bigger worry of journalists is the extent to which news and political blogs might gain credibility over established outlets. There is also very real concern these days about threats to academic peer review which should make us think of blogs less as a vehicle for spouting opinions than as one more example of communication tools by passing the established structures for sharing and informing. There is good and bad here.

The earliest web pages contained lots of pretty useless personal information and pictures of people’s pets. There are still sites like this but the medium was adapted and shaped by users into the current web that you can no longer imagine living without. Now there is still lots of garbage out there but there is also remarkable information to be had. It will be the same for blogging – the best uses are yet to be imagined.